The Conservative Reformation and Its Theology - Saint Mary ...

locally, nor carnally, but spiritually." To this we reply that it is not on the
contrary. The Lutheran Church repeatedly and unequivocally has denied
all local or carnal presence of Christ's body, and has affirmed that, as
antagonistic to any such conceptions; His presence is "spiritual." When
the word “spiritual," however, is used as the opposite of "true," and means
that His presence is one which rests on our intellectual operation, or on our
faith, and not on the nature of His own person, then our Church denies that
it is "spiritual." Dr. Gerhart, however, defines the words differently from
either of these meanings. He says: "Not locally, nor carnally, but
spiritually; that is, by the Holy Ghost." The Reformed Church maintains
that Christ's sacramental presence is mediated by the Holy Spirit. The
Lutheran Church, on the contrary, maintains that it is through the divine
nature in Christ's own person, and that Christ is present, not because the
Holy Spirit enables Him to be present to faith, though absent in reality, but
because, in His own inseparable person, the Godhead is of itself present,
and the humanity is rendered present through the Godhead. The Trinity is
indeed indivisible, and the Holy Spirit is present at the Supper. But the
persons of the Trinity have their distinctive work. It is the work of the
Holy Spirit to illumine the mind and kindle the heart to the reception of the
great gift which the glorious Saviour, present in His own person, offers to
the soul. The whole Christ is truly present after the incomprehensible
manner of that world of mystery and of verity in which He reigns. He
applies, to faith, at His table, the redemption which he wrought upon the
cross. Through His body and blood He purchased our salvation--truly and
supernaturally; through His body and blood He applies salvation--truly
and supernaturally. In Christ's Supper, as in His person, the human and
natural is the organ of the divine and supernatural which glorifies it. As is
the redemption, so is its sacrament. The foundation of both is the same, and
lies forever inapproachable by man, in the lowest depth of the eternal mind.
In the redemption, nature furnished the outward organ of the divine, in the
frail body and the